Draughting tablets

Do any of you professional cad users out there use a draughting tablet? If
so, what are the benefits/pitfalls. What tablets are the industry standard
and who are the main suppliers in the UK.

 

Yes. Benefits include up to 16 buttons on the puck, ability to program
several hundred commands and custom routines to single-click selections
without cluttering up the screen with pulldowns, flyouts, dialogs, etc., and
a one-to-one correspondence between the location of the puck and the cursor
location on the screen. I've gotten so used to the advantages over the years
that I go batty if I ever have to do CAD work with a simple mouse.

About the only drawback is the extra couple of extra sq. ft. of desk space
required. Can't say about the UK, but we've used GTCO-Calcomp products for
15 years with great success. Our current tablets are DrawingBoard III's.

BTW, I'm often seen here slamming Calcomp *plotters* and "printers* -- but
the DrawingBoard series is about the only thing using the Calcomp name
that's worthwhile.
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